Dougie Luv (who suffixes his surname with “I wanted a bigger name but that’s all I have to work with”) is a newly minted food truck operator. Actually, he’s running two Dougie Dog Diner Trucks, one at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre ‘pod’ and another, a roaming mobile truck. He’s seen both sides of a simmering argument that street food is unfair competition for bricks and mortar restaurants. He actually runs a restaurant on Granville St., Dougie Dog, which he’s closing down to run his trucks. He argues it’s not street food that’s been bad for downtown restaurants, it’s the Canucks not going past the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, it was the hockey strike, it’s the downturn in U.S. tourists and it’s a new post-recession generation which, by necessity, has turned frugal. “It’s a whole paradigm shift and it’s a food truck revolution,” he says. He said in his second year of his three-year-old restaurant, he made $22,000 in U.S. money; in the third year, it declined to $125. “The argument also goes that I don’t pay (property) taxes. Yeah, well my fuel bill is $3,000 a month, my commissary rent is $2,000 a month,” he says. He does feel though, that he’ll have more time to himself. He says he’s been going 20 hours a day, seven days a week for three years and he’s been a marketing dynamo. Jason Alexander and Lou Diamond has been on a Dougie Dog documentary; Dougie Dog is in the Guinness Book of Records (for the world’s most expensive hot dog); he makes his own brand of root beer; he’s appeared on CBC’s Dragon’s Den. But now, he says, he might take a vacation on the off season and get some sleep. He’ll still have the world’s most expensive hot dog ($100) on 24-hour notice (The Dragon Dog with a foot-long sausage infused with $2,600-a-bottle Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac, Kobe beef, lobster, truffles, tomatoes and their secret sauces. The top seller on the food truck, he says is the Donut Burger with organic pattie, bacon, pastrami, provolone, guacamole, tomato, fried egg on a donut bun. “I sell out all the time.” Trevor Holness, another newby to the street, is pretty much ready to giddy-up and go with Stir It Up, his pedal-powered coffee cart. There’s only one pesky problem deterring the roll-out, at the Olympic Village Canada Line station: there’s no toilet for him or his employees. It’s an ‘oops’ of the kind that vendors and the City have to contend with as the street food program starts its third year. Until now, most vendors were concentrated in the Downtown Business Area and vendors could find a bathroom when bladders insisted. But the City felt it was time to spread out the street food licences outside of the DBA for the sake of competing street food vendors and restaurants. “These new permits are in places where there aren’t a lot of services around,” says Holness. “I can’t go to a competitor and ask to use the washroom. My wife has joked about a commercial she saw about adult diapers.” (Hey, is this a business opportunity for a modern-day honey wagon or what!) But even in the downtown area, it’s not easy. When I spoke to Re-Up BBQ operator Lindsay Kaisaris last year, she called it a cowboy existence. “I think of the Vancouver Hotel (across the street from Re-Up) as my office,” she joked. “You have to take the cash, lock everything, write a note on the window and rush to the bathroom as fast as you can.” One of the coffees Holness will be hawking is Marley Coffee, run by Bob Marley’s son Rohan and co-founder Shane Whittle, of Vancouver. Bob Marley loved coffee (One Cup of Coffee was one of his first recordings) and always wanted to get back to farming. Holness likes the idea of a bicycle-power and his old-school espresso machine where a lever controls the amount and speed of water going through; it suits his green ethics. “I love coffee because of its whole history. Where coffee goes, revolution follows,” he says. Asked to explain, he says where people gather to drink coffee, they talk.” Previously, Holness worked as a carpenter in the film industry but an injury and fatherhood changed the course of his life. “I wasn’t sure I was going to like the customer service business,” he says. But he’s already been operating a mobile permit and likes talking to different people every day, “controlling his own destiny” and selling what he loves. “People need their go juice. I can start them off with a smile. Even if they’re just walking past, I’ll say good morning. It makes you feel good.”

Christina Culver of Culver City Salads

Christina Culver of Culver City Salads is another new vendor and in her case, it’s salads. She worked in the beauty industry when friends in her building started paying her to make them lunches. A year ago, she got into the salad delivery business, delivering shareable salad lunches to the downtown, Gastown and Kits areas. A truck (at Victory Square), she says, is the logical next step. She slyly avoids marketing her food as vegan. “I really want to feed people who aren’t vegan and make them happy,” she says. “We don’t make a huge point of letting people know we’re vegan. There’s a stigma. People who are vegan figure it out.” Her salad ingredients are sourced locally and you can be sure it’s not rabbit food. They start with a quinoa, soba noodle or brown rice base and then she adds what’s available from the farms – kale, herbs, beans, grains, seeds. She’s hoping the 1984 Grubber truck will be ready to go by June 1. It will have a solar panel to general power to help run the fridge. “It’ll be painted green and I’m doing stuff with living plants to display,” she says. She hopes incorporate food from other vendors, selling, for instance, Earnest Ice Cream from her truck. The Juice Truck, in Gastown, has been carrying her salads for some time. “Down the road, I hope to have more trucks on the road and to branch out to other cities. One day, I want to open a restaurant. These are baby steps toward that,” she says. What’s the common thread with these new street inductees? They are passionate about the food they make and taking it to the streets. “It’s my passion,” says Luv. “It has to be. It’s what separates being successful and not successful.”

A look back and ahead…

The summer of 2013 brings 15 new street food vendors for a total count up to 114 stationary vendors in Vancouver. Throw in the 20 mobile vendors prowling the city and we can say we’re really cookin’ with gas.

Next year, there’ll be 15 more spots and at that time city will reviews the program to see where to go from there. This year, vendor locations were moved away from downtown core to areas like Beach Ave., Victory Square, Langara campus and the Queen Elizabeth Theatre area.

“When we began, we didn’t think Vancouver Coastal Health would support these types of foods. We’ve worked with them, established a set of standards, including nutrition, built a relationship and helped create an application process with them,” says Sadhu Johnston, the deputy city manager. “We’ve come a long way.”

I’ll say! Vancouver’s street food scene was rated No. 3 last month by Travel and Escape TV, behind Portland and Austin which had huge head starts. And in Portland, anyone who passes inspections can set up in a private lot or one of the parking lot pods. In Vancouver, they’re selected for quality and, as much as possible, green considerations.

Vancouver’s 2013 vendors were approved to start up May 1 but many are still waiting for trucks or carts to be finished. This year, the City didn’t have a tasting panel as part of the selection process as was the case last year. “It was very, very, very labour intensive for vendors,” says Johnston. “It involved quite a level of effort but we may do it again in the future.”

“We’ve been learning a lot,” says Johnston. “The first year, the lottery method didn’t work very well. We moved to a panel of experts reviewing business plans, menu choices and improved the way we work with our partners from the health side of things. Certainly, we learned about where carts and trucks can fit in. There were some challenges around parking, like some trucks would have designated spots but someone would have parked there despite the signs on the parking meter.

Andy Fielding, president of the Street Food Association and proprietor of Kaboom Box (two locations at Georgia and Burrard and Georgia and Granville) says vendors are inspected “often,” in response to concerns some people have about health standards. “Inspectors come to the trucks and to the commissaries. I haven’t worked in restaurants in this city but I understand we’re inspected even more regularly. And besides, part of the experience of street food is seeing food being prepared in front of you. You can look right in and see what’s going on.”

The street food business is a challenging one because of the very short season. “It’s akin to a retail store that makes its money at Christmas and you have to have a good location. It’s tricky and it’s a challenge to be outside the downtown area. You really need a density of people,” says Fielding.

The Street Food Association, he says, represents about 30 top-tier vendors. “We have a criteria for members and we represent the vendors doing the most unique and sustainable type of menus. It’s the kind of criteria the City uses to choose new vendors. Regular hot dog vendors are not part of the association,” he says. “If an event organizer approaches us, they know our members are the top tier.”

And events are what will keep vendors afloat through the year. Farmers’ markets and catering are important alternative revenue streams but more events are starting to emerge. “Winter is the Achilles heel of the street food business and we’d like to organize more events through the winter.” Dine Out Vancouver’s street food event and food truck festivals have been very successful in past years.

“We’re working with the former owners of the Waldorf Hotel (a food truck festival was organized in the hotel parking lot last year) to put on another festival.” They plan to have a food truck festival every Sunday from June 16 to mid-September at a parking lot across from the Terminal Ave. Skytrain Station.

“We’re trying to organize more events at the Art Gallery. We’ve met with people there,” he adds.

“I could pretty much tell you nobody in this business is getting rich. I think if they’re honest, they’d all tell you that. But working on the streets is fun and I’d like to add that we add a lot to the city in general. We’re ambassadors, we bring people downtown, add vibrance and make it an interesting place to be.”

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